I want to say how much I appreciate how generous members are in sharing their knowledge with those of us who know a lot less. Much of this sharing goes on inPM's hidden from public view, and I wanted to acknowledge Ichthy for his recent help in solving a technical problem.

Sounds OK to me, if the discussion happens to be of general interest. The advice I got from Ichthy regarded a malfunctioning turret condenser diaphragm. Since most of us use older equipment that requires some degree of maintenance and repair, net management might consider a forum dedicated to questions about microscope maintenance and repair._________________Man sieht nur, was man weiss--Goethe

I agree and have had the benefit of a number of valuable interventions from Members both on and off board.

Perhaps there could be a facility here where the distilled/summarised technical contents of PM's could be made available to all with the permission of both Members?

BR

John

I think all that needs to happen for that is for those in the pm to simply copy/paste the content into a normal thread. Or to summarise the content.

Another angle is to try and encourage people to talk in the open more so than in PMs. It's a bane of forums that much can happen in the background that would benefit others and make the community more active and informed in general.

I agree. There are some reasons for using PM rather than open forums such as when someone contacts you via PM in response to a forum posting and when you prefer not to publicly mention a particular company, etc. Also, you may be a bit shy or worried that the membership might not find the topic interesting. But who really knows if they will or not? Hence the suggestion to have a special forum just for repair issues. _________________Man sieht nur, was man weiss--Goethe